HUMILIATED (Kaunas … 2 GERS … 1)

The most relentless European runs in our history and Scotland’s home win over France in the EURO 2008 qualifyers. Down to Walter. Rangers best ever campaigns in both the European Cup/Champions League and the UEFA Cup and repairing the damage done by Berti Vogts to lay the groundwork for arguably Scotland’s bravest ever qualifying campaign. If there are ANY flukes going around just now, it’s tonight’s result. A man who qualified Rangers for FOUR Champions League Group stages only enters the realms of fluke when he loses a qualifyer - not when he reaches a UEFA Cup final. I cannot believe the furious delight with which some so-called Gers fans are tearing into the very personnell who gave their heart and soul for that jersey last season.

The first competitive games of the season used to be against Mortons and Clydebanks in the old League Cup sectionals. We were in a much poorer state then, Rangers, yet the July/August games seemed less earth-shatteringly important than what we’ve experienced in late summer over the last decade. Happier days though? As I grew up my worries at the start of campaigns centred on avoiding Aberdeen or Celtic in the cups, to give us a chance of winning something. Anything. Sometimes I even wanted to avoid Chesterfield in the Anglo-Scottish Cup. Robert Prytz was big news to me when he made a sensational debut at Kilbowie in the League Cup. John MacDonald once scored a couple of goals in the Dryborough Cup final - he was upstaged by another Rangers goal that day - at the onset of another season in which we’d finish miles down the table and light years behind at least three of our domestc rivals. Happy days? They say that, the Four Yorkshiremen - they say you were happiest when you had nothing.

We’re about to find out if they were right.

For, having enjoyed a decade of unflinching domestic success between the ages of 20 and 30, all my deepest lusts for championships and petty local bragging rights - the dark, basic, preternatural need to find equilibrium in the loyalty-v-reward stakes - were more than sated by the end of the last century. The more you get, the more you want,yes, but getting it at all, and to obese, knackering proportions, at SOME point in your sentient adult life, is what really counts. Then you can die knowing your emotional investments weren’t a complete waste of time, even if the dividends do become distant memories. Rangers most vital league title win is maybe yet to come but I’ve seen MY most vital Rangers league win. That distraction, that obsession has long gone. I’ve always known the European zenith is what Rangers should be really aiming for. I’ve always suspected that a club of our size, in a set-up of Scotland’s size, is embarrassing itself and insulting the entire national soccer infrastructure, if it settles for mere league titles. With last season’s unrelentingly brilliant campaign in the UEFA Cup, the last vestiges of doubt were blown away: UEFA Land is where we belong.

And tonight, just to reinforce the point, we’ve tasted it from the other angle. Without Europe, Rangers are utterly impoverished.

Financially? Hardly. In Champions League terms, yes, we’ve just slipped into the poor house. But try taking yer RFC begging bowl round the Motherwells and Falkirks of the world. We ARE Scottish Football so, no, we aren’t poor in real terms. But, no matter how often the press chuck debit and credit columns at you in the next few days, the true punter knows you have to actually stop every now and then and ask WHY we need such-and-such an amount of money from qualifying for this-and-that stage of whatever tournament? Exactly why do we fixate on money for our club? Every now and then we have to slap ourselves, or get slapped by some mob in a bad Norwich City strip, to be reminded what football is all about - the triumph and the failure.

The finances determine who experiences which, yes, but at SOME POINT we have to turn round and focus on the actual games our club play on the actual pitch in an actual sport called actual FOOTBALL. Manchester wasn’t about the money - it was about the glory. Tonight wasn’t about the money. It was about protecting the lustre, maintaining the glow of all-too recent continental laurels. That’s where the hurt comes in, for me. That’s where the disaster is, for Rangers - for all of us in blue.

I wasn’t expecting us to do much this season. I wasn’t complaining about that either. I knew we’d suffer for last season’s exertions. I’ve said as much since the summer recess - and I was perfectly understanding of why that would happen. But not how. All I wanted was to challenge for the title and get booted out of Europe by a famous club, a good team, someone worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Rangers. I set my sights low for 2008/2009 - but, as it transpires, not low enough.

Unlike the former Dr Who, whose grandmother of good Irish Protestant stock he so embarrassed in that recent BBC genealogy-for-voyeurs series, we do not now get to play any Danes. But that most famous compatriot of the good people of Aalborg knows all too well how we feel tonight. Horatio told him his mother’s wedding followed hard upon his father’s funeral. The Rangers did it in reverse - the funereal of early August made all the more sick by the harsh temporal proximity of the celebratory in May. Wearing the same all-blue strip with which we contested the UEFA Cup Final, it was the ultimate humiliation to exit Europe altogether the very next season, after just one tie, to such lowly opposition, in the wake of the longest and one of the greatest seasons of our history. 2007/2008 provided our longest, bravest run in continental competition. 2008/2009 has equalled our shortest and become The most embarrassing. From 19 European games against the Fiorentinas, Barcas, Sportings and Werders of the world to one squalid fuck-up against FBK Kaunas of Lithu-fucking-ania.

Fuck Hamlet and his weirdo family - this, tonight, on BBC2 was Hubris of truly Shakespearean proportions. This, in sporting and dramatic terms, was a true tragedy for one particular audience.

This was worse than Berwick.

Cash in the Attic was supposed to be on BBC2 at 5:30. Instead we saw Rangers blowing a windfall and selling the family jewels at the same time. JUST when we’d finally ended our thirty six-year wait for European respectability, we zero the calendar with our next move. Just in from work, I had my tea on my lap in front of the build-up to the game. A large Reader’s Digest atlas of the world substituted for a TV Dinner tray. Resting this publication on my loins, to protect my meat and two veg from a warm plate, will be the closest I get to travelling Europe with Rangers this season.

And so, the idiots begin. Dougie Donnelly, Craig Levein and Turncoat Pressley wrung their hands over “the dire consequences of this result - just as Celtic’s loss to Artmedia Bratislava at the same stage in 2005 had cost the Parkhead club so dearly”. EH??!! Did Strachan not win the league that season and every season since? Have Celtic not defeated AC Milan, Man United and Benfica and quaified for the knock-out stages of the Champions League every season since … and are in the group stages again this season?!! I’d settle for those “dire consequences”, thanks, as well as the chance to have a clear go at Celtic in the league this season, unfettered by European “distractions”!

I then turned over for ten minutes of Radio Scotland. I tuned in on the off chance of hearing an interview with Walter or Ally - or somebody. I just wanted to be close. Instead, however, all we got was Jim Traynor getting hysterical in his need for tabloid ratings and phone-in rantings, and every arsehole with a phone texting in pathetic messages of historical revisionism which Richard Gordon was only too happy to read out.

The basic message form the ambulance-chasing Rangers-haters was that reaching last season’s UEFA Cup Final was obviously a fluke and that we’re the worst team in the world to watch. I, of course, decided that, in that case, Celtic’s European-cup winning season had also been a fluke and that Celtic must have been every bit as shit as us last season if they could only beat us by three points and a few goals to the title and exit both domestic cup cometitions at home, while also failing to score against us for four successive games for the first time in fifty years.

But then I’m just being as silly and wrong as the paranoids. A heat of the moment thing. The really annoying loud mouths are the so-called Rangers fans now writing off the last campaign, some of whom did, in all honesty, spend most of last season complaining that we were “poor to watch”. No we weren’t. Not to anyone who truly cared about Rangers or, for that matter good defending and consistently winning teams we weren’t. But, no matter - these people are now calling for the head of everyone who provided Rangers’ best season in years. These people are forgetting Walter Smith also took us closer to wining the Champions League than any Scottish side may ever get - Walter got us booted out in the first round the following season that time too.

The most relentless European runs in our history and Scotland’s home win over France in the EURO 2008 qualifyers. Down to Walter. Rangers best ever campaigns in both the European Cup/Champions League and the UEFA Cup and repairing the damage done by Berti Vogts to lay the groundwork for arguably Scotland’s bravest ever qualifying campaign. If there are ANY flukes going around just now, it’s tonight’s result. A man who qualified Rangers for FOUR Champions League Group stages only enters the realms of fluke when he loses a qualifyer - not when he reaches a UEFA Cup final. I cannot believe the furious delight with which some so-called Gers fans are tearing into the very personnell who gave their heart and soul for that jersey last season.

But, of course, what happens happens. The good stays good and the bad stays bad. This defeat would have hurt whenever it occurred but last season’s run remains brilliant, irrespective of how poorly we’ve followed it up. Blame MUST be apportioned for tonight. But, if even I’d been fearing the worst after our last two games and explaining why we shouldn’t lash out in anger, there must be some mitigation in the air.

Dole out the blame for tonight - absolutely! - but let’s be sure we get the direction and the weight correct. The players who were two results short of lifting FOUR trophies last season cannot all suddenly be duds. The one-up-front system we used last season cannot suddenly be a flop when it had that team on the cusp of immortality. It is the fatigue. It is the budget. It is the lack of certain players in certain roles. And it is US, the Bears. We’re ALL to blame, but let’s apportion soberly:

There was more relief than ecstasy when Thomson scored. I was so conscious - had, for the last six days, been so sure - that this game could become our Artmedia Bratislava that I would be in no mood to cheer until we were two or three up. Maybe the sight of Thomson netting brought as much pessemism as hope: His only other goal for us was vital yet ultimately futile and I worried it could also prove to be the case for this one. Again, as per his winner in the last Ibrox Old Firmer, he ghosted into the box, took a touch and slotted cooly under an advancing goalie. The crowd noise was considerably reduced for this goal but the financial ramifications - always uppermost in our minds when we play shite teams in qualifyers - could be far greater. He tried his bit to get us straight into the Champions League via winning the SPL. Now he’s doing his best to get us in the back door. Kevin Thomson’s goals failed both times.

McGregor looks slow and even slightly overweight. Black is slimming too.

Broadfoot seemed to be slotting well into central defence. In fact he was our only bright spot in the two Ibrox fixtures last week. But that’s so much insignificance now. Everyone is to blame tonight. Everyone. And I include myself in that.

Kenny Miller is as Kenny Miller does.

Charlie Adam - why?

All Lee McCulloch has done since his dismissal at Pittodrie last December is foul people. Now he doesn’t even do that well.

Whittaker remains lost in the limbo world between “stick” and “twist”.

Nacho Novo almost came out with some credit but - really - he just tried a bit and looked like he could control a ball. That’s not praiseworthy - that’s just basics.

Christian Dailly had forgotten the basics.

Weir and Broadfoot have to take the rap for the winning goal.

Velicka at least had a shot.

Kaunas took forty minutes to realise just how bad we were. That we couldn’t see it out to half-time speaks volumes. Had Alexander been in goal we may well have avoided the equaliser but that’s where we start taking the blame from the pitch to the technical area …

Kaunas hit the bar and had plenty other chances before they actually secured the win. It was the most inevitable goal I have ever seen in my life. Even more inevitable than Venegoor of Hesselink’s at The Piggery last season - even more inevitable than so many at Pittodrie. Why is it that commentators insist on using the word “shock” at the very time anyone in the know, anyone who knows anything about football and Rangers, is least shocked. From the moment Kaunas equalised there was only gonnae be one winner tonight.

That I expected this, that I had steadied myself in anticipation of the most horrible result possible in this tie, allows me to retain a bit of clarity. After all, for the next 12 months I’ll have most of my midweeks free to contemplate it. And, as any good fan knows, the really bad results marinate - they stay with you forever, just like the really good ones. We have the rest of our lives to get angry about tonight. Walter Smith can take the blame for a few tactical and personnel changes he did and didn’t make this evening but that’s ALL he takes the blame for. After all, it wasn’t this week this blog predicted such a European exit for Rangers under Smith - it was JANUARY 2007! Check the archive - scroll down to the bottom right of this screen. See what I expected of Walter when he was brought back in. I expected us to give Celtic a real hard time domestically but I expected FUCK ALL in a European sense. And, as WE wanted a new manager at New Year 2007, and WE wanted to go back in time and keep it Scottish, and WE asked Walter to step in, WE Are The People to blame, ultimately.

So, he’s over-achieved beyond all belief, Walter. He’s provided me with the two best European campaigns of my life and arguably the two best of Rangers’ history when the exact contexts are considered. He’s also responsible for Nine-In-A-Row so - hey - no backlash from me on Walter. Blame? Yes. Short-term blame. Witch-hunt? - no fucking way. And don’t let me catch anyone else getting unduly ripped into Walter. Because, as I said when Paul le Guen was sent packing and Walter welcomed back like the hero he always was, THIS IS WHAT WE WANTED.

Tonight, the most culpable people were not on the pitch, and not even in the technical area. The Rangers people most to blame for this worst result in our European history, are David Murray, Barry Ferguson and you and me. And you and I take more blame than Barry or Sir Dave.

The most embarassing domestic defeat of my time supporting Rangers was the league cup exit to St Johnstone at Ibrox. This shares one common factor with tonight’s continental nadir: The Captain didn’t play. Barry didn’t play. Thus, Mr Rangers excuses himself from blame for a defeat which shatters the entire club. One man foresaw this scenario - where Rangers simply weren’t ALLOWED to win without Bazza - and he tried to solve it. I said I wouldn’t mention Paul le Guen until Rangers were knocked out of Europe under Walter Smith. That it’s only happening now is testament to Waldo - our greatest ever manager - but that it had to happen at all is down to the most knee-jerk support in christendom. us. And me for agreeing to shut up about PLG and let the knee-jerkers win. Me for not giving PLG the audible support he deserved at Fir Park that day because I was scared I’d contribute to teh scene Setanta most wanted as they wandered round the ground interviewing folk on 2nd January 2007 - Rangers supporters arguing and coming to blows with each other.

As Edmund Burke said, kinda, all it takes is for loud-mouthed, short-termist arseholes to succeed is for loud-mouthed, long-termist arseholes to say nothing. Tonight was my fault as much as anyone’s. But ANYONE who wanted rid of Le Guen can have NO COMPLAINTS tonight. Fucking NONE. And those who moaned about our “style” last season - how fucking PATHETIC a complaint is that in the first place for something as tribal as football fandom??!! - can have EVEN FEWER complaints because, one thing about PLG is he played EXPANSIVE football.

Rangers are utterly lost without Ferguson. This is how he always wanted it, did Barry. When there’s a row between the captain and the manager, the manager HAS to win - the player HAS to go - or there’s only one ultimate result. It took one season longer than expected to kick in but we have it now: Rangers are a one-man team and when that one man doesn’t play his influence is as negative as possible.

David Murray, Walter Smith, Martin Bain - they can all be blamed for not being stronger but they were actually giving us what we wanted: We wanted rid of Le Guen. We couldn’t wait around for the club to be rebuilt from the bottom up. We couldn’t handle two Old Firm games without a win. We wanted a team of old men and stop-gaps who could churn out some short-term stuff, take us BACK to the Nine-In-A-Row days when all we ever did was slag Walter’s ineffectiveness in Europe and demand a foreign manager who would change the entire culture of the team … and then we got one from Holland and he spent too much money so we demanded one who wouldnae spend as much and who would give us European progress so Alex McLeish got no money and made us the first Scottish team ever to qualify from the Champions League Group stages - so he had to go because he wisnae foreign … and then we got in Le Guen to make us a European and a domestic force and do it on the cheap.

Can ye believe he needed more than six months??!!

Le Guen took six months. He identified the problem with creating a modern, all-round team. He identified the problem in trying to forge a template of on-field productivity in which every player would have to fulfill his role exactly in order to overcome the financial shortfalls with tactical nouse and discipline: The problem was Barry Ferguson but Le Guen knew Barry was our best player and an icon. So he took his time. He cajoled Barry, he begged Barry, he ordered Barry, he let Barry make a total fanny of himself in the December game against St Mirren and he sacked him.

Sir Alex Ferguson says the player he most regrets losing in his time at Man U is Jap Staam. But Staam had to go to maintain the dressing rooom balance and harmony. The Dutch defender slagged the boss - he broke the code of discipline. He had to go. Sir Alex wins more league titles and another Champions League ater Staam goes. We wouldn’t have lost in the long run if our Ferguson had been sold. More likely he would just have lost the captaincy for a few months until he toed the line. Le Guen’s departure was the end of Bill Struth’s last remaining influence. One player WAS now bigger than the club.

Now, without PLG, we see that the athletic, total-footbal style he wanted - with two or three reasonably-priced players on the roster for each position, would have been ideal. He didn’t lose a European tie, PLG and he woudl certainly not have lost to tonight’s opponents. His refurbishment of our style would probably just have been coming to fruition now, had he stayed. And we would not have so many old player completely worn out by giving their all to beat Celtic a few times AND provide the European glory we in teh stands always say we want but continute to be completely ignorant of how to achieve. No - we went to Fir park on 2nd January 2007 and I sat silent while others sang Ferguson’s name and booed Le Guen. The chairman tried for decades to get us all onside with the modern European way but the very people David Murray’s success attracted to Ibrox were the kind of wannabe accountants who started organisations with the express aim of getting rid of the most succesful, revolutionary figure at Ibrox since Struth. So, in a final attempt to please the loudest voices in the Rangers support, he sacked PLG and let Barry win a fight he doesn’t really even understand. Sir Dave eventually just gave into the boo boys, the loudmouths - the very people who will once again be chucking away their season tickets tonight and pretending they were never THAT into Rangers or that hey ALWAYS KNEW bringing back Walter Smith was a mistake …

It’ll be left to The True Blues to pick up the pieces once again.

Now, where did I put that brush and shovel …

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Published:
08.05.08 / 9pm
Category:
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